Test Drive Unlimited Review

Test Drive, as many (actually, virtually no one) gamers know is one of gaming's longest running series dating all the way back to the late 80's ('87 to be precise). That's two years before I even existed. The latest in the series, Test Drive Unlimited (TDU) has just been released just 2 months ago. As usual, I got the game and started playing on the official servers.

One thing I can say about this game is that the graphics are stunning. At Low settings at 800x600 I'm running at 20+FPS... And my PC is no slouch!! LOW SETTINGS! Well... I gotta admit that my CPU is holding back my graphics card.. Such irony. I spent RM550 on the card just to have my CPU fall behind. Even Oblivion I can play at 18+FPS at medium-high.. Oh well, even my new hard drive has decided to turn on me..

Based on the largest of the Hawaii islands, Oahu, the developers at Atari/Eden Games have faithfully re-created every square mile of the island for you to drive around in the free-roaming environment. You get roughly 1000KM of road to burn rubber. Imagine that. It's like running the 100 meter race TEN THOUSAND TIMES!! You can't even imagine the scope. It's probably bigger then the whole of San Andreas, 10 times. And Oblivion is just a postage-stamp nuisance at the top of the envelope Oahu.

You get 125 cars and bikes from the off, with the full map and client, offsetting the huge 7.5GB install it takes up. At only RM119, people, just get this game. You get multiplayer (highly recommended) and all the exotic cars you can dream off, with more to come as free downloadable content later on.

Word of warning though, the engines clips for most of the available vehicles are horrendous, and if you're one of those that want authenticity, don't get this game. Get GTR 2 instead. THAT's another demanding game. If you can't play Oblivion, don't touch GTR 2.

For petrol heads looking for a new game to wet your pants, this is the one. For those looking to tweak tyre pressure, suspension stiffness, ECU and the turbo, avoid this.

P.S By the way, I'm driving an Enzo Ferrari in TDU.

System specs
Minimum:Pentium 4 2.4GHz or equivalent, nVidia 6800 or equivalent, 8GB hard disk space, 512MB RAM, dial-up connection.

Recommended:Intel Core 2 Duo e6300 1.86GHz or equivalent, nVidia 7900 or equivalent, 10GB hard disk space, 1GB RAM, broadband

Pros:Good fun multiplayer, stunning graphics, relatively lagless in multiplayer, car models faithfully modelled

Cons:Server is frequently down, engine sounds are terrible, save game can be corrupt or rollback to previous save.

Final Verdict:79%